LatinOcean – Digital Marketing Consulting

In case you are already playing in Asia or are planning to enter the market, you may want to consider having a .asia website for the region. (e.g. talent2.asia, michaelpage.asia, hudson.asia).

You were able to get a .asia top level domain since around mid-march and it’s still early stages. Last time i checked the process is a little more protracted than the registration of other domains (.com et al) and I think it is a more expensive too.

A couple of people I have spoken to think this is a rip off. Although I don’t have a major problem with the conspiracy theory, my view is that for a few hundred dollars it’s worthwhile going through the process and see if the new domain takes off. To me that’s a better option than losing a web address that I would have liked to own because it goes with my regional presence, branding, etc.

If you need a hand with this drop me an email jorgeatlatinocean.com, though it is pretty easy

cheers.

referred site: The DotAsia Organisation

Via Ross Dawson’s blog

From the press release, this is how it’s meant to work

…if a user is browsing for hybrid cars in Yahoo! Autos and has selected San Francisco as their default location in Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo!’s SmartAds platform can assemble and deliver a display ad in real time that showcases a hybrid vehicle from a major auto brand, as well as local dealer information and current lease rates. This provides a relevant experience to the user and allows the marketer to reach a user who is likely to become a customer.

Back to recruitment advertising, I guess there will be no problem to display a job opening at the dealership, or the car manufacturer, or a San Francisco local council opportunity for an environmental engineer, etc.

Let’s contain the excitement until the service is launched locally.

Thinker/doer Lou Adler from the Adler group has kicked off a project which aims to produce “The Most Advanced, Innovative Career Website in the World”. It is an open project in as much as he’s asking for everyone’s help in putting together all the elements of such a site, and has also considered the possibility of sharing the authoring of the final product.

The article outlining the project already includes some ideas to consider when thinking through the site’s content sources, function elements, backend, etc. Some of them are:

- Use private virtual communities.
- Take maximum advantage of user-generated content.
- Push proactive employee referral programs.
- Develop respectful, instant application processing.
- Add gadgets and feeds.
- Implement cultural branding.
- Take advantage of the current networking sites.

among others.

I didn’t think that any of those suggestions were bad or wrong. But as I was going down the wishlist, I got a picture in my head. You know those composite faces that get made from the best features of the most beautiful people (Julia’s lips, Scarlett’s eyes, etc.); and you know what happens inevitably, right? The face is at best ugly, sometimes it does not even look human.

If the best career website in the world ended up being like those composites, it would not be that great, would it? Imagine all these rich features vying for the web visitors attention making them feel sufficiently intimidated and lost to just leave the site.

And then I got the other picture in my head, which is the scene in city slickers where Curly (Palance) asks Mitch (Billy) about the ‘One Thing’ that matters most to him.

Maybe when designing a career website it’s worthwhile asking what that One Thing is. What do you want to achieve with this site first and foremost? It does not have to exclude other goals but it may steer the website’s design, development and operations in the right direction.

Hope you had a good humpday. I did!

how does a unique/single employer value proposition work to attract and retain people with different work ad life values, preferences and styles?

a suggestion: you layer it to appeal to your employee segments; and yes, theoretically at least you have to think about employee segments of one (maybe there’s a long tail post on employer branding coming soon).

So what are these layers?

- Foundation: this is the ‘infrastructure’ of the EB, the set of values, preferences, modus operandi, etc. that are company-wide. These will likely be ageless/long term and not-for-negotiation.

- Design: which attends to the business unit/region/division super-segments. These rest of the infrastructure but are tailored to match the aspirations and preferences of the people that operate within these groups, whilst enabling their strategic role.

- Features: focused on teams or individuals, embodied in sets of practices that enable the company to speak to employees with a personal tone (I cater to you). The features are flexible, interchangeable.

The interconnection between foundation, design and features produces EB execution. Example

foundation: the company is green (and not just for the last couple hours)
design: the finance team is prudent, errs on the safe side; the R&D team is innovative and risk-friendly
features: john works 2 days a week from home
interconnection: john is a part-time telecommuter from the finance team; he has a company laptop with an RSA token / VPN for remote access. He’s not been furnished with a printer.

Can you think of better examples? …. now if this is something I have unconsciously robbed off someone’s model from someone pls let me know.

Ross Clennett from Ingenius Coaching explains agency consultants in a recruiter daily article how they can convince hiring managers to go exclusive with them. From the article, clients need to be explained that:

- Multi-listing potentially devalues the job in the market and potentially devalues the brand of the employer
- Quantity becomes more important than finding the best candidate (e.g. consultants flogging CV’s only to be seen doing something)
- The client does more work and still pays the same fee
- The client does more work, resents it and starts to cut corners
- Exclusivity gives the recruiter time to do a thorough job to find the best candidate
- The reality is that all recruiters give priority to exclusive jobs
- The best candidates are put forward to exclusive jobs
- Other professions don’t do it

Text in brackets is mine.

He finally requests not to ask exclusivity for exclusivity’s sake (i.e. do the best for the client based on the circunstances)

I am sure recruiters can corroborate or not if this reasoning will get their clients to say ‘hmmm… ok! I will work only with you’.

Assumming clients know all this already, I’d say that the reason why clients opt for a portfolio approach is because they do not know which vendor is going to present them the most hireable candidate; this is how we go about making other decisions when outcome uncertainty is a factor, right?; investment in shares may be a good example (you don’t know which company will give you the best/desired returns)

Agency consultants themselves balance their options to source the right person for the client’s assignment. They run their databases, go to all the job boards, put the ad on the paper if they can afford it, etc. Again, they are trying to counter uncertainty by increasing coverage.

You could be rightly arguing that the chosen options are already coming from a pre-screened pool of vendors (e.g. the largest agencies, or the most trafficked websites). Even with this in mind, I put to you that lack of exclusivity stems from the vendor’s lack of offering differentiation, at least in the eyes of the paying customer. In this context, recruiters need to stand out, whether it is by focusing on service breadth, depth, originality, etc.

If this reasoning is sound, then your capacity as a vendor to get your clients to go exclusive with you is determined well before the client contacts you for your services; this perception was set when your customer understood what makes your product unique.

Now you tell me, is this a sissy theoretical argument and there’s no room for differentiation in the recruitment space? Do your customers care if you have a stand out offering? Do you bother in trying to lock in a client, and if yes what’s the clincher?

Have a good weekend

When I mention I’m an engineer in our Sydney office, I’m often greeted with looks of surprise: it seems many people aren’t aware of our Australian presence. Thus, it is with great pleasure that we are inviting engineers from Silicon Valley (or anywhere in California) to the Googleplex in Mountain View next Tuesday, 8 May for G’day Google: an evening (6-9 pm) open house event showcasing Google Australia…

… Working in the Sydney office is lots of fun and incredibly challenging. My desk looks over Darling Harbour, so it can sometimes be difficult to spend all day looking at a monitor.

from G’day California, organised by Google Australia, and intended to leverage off a particularly strong regional employer brand to reap talent for the co’s worldwide offices. My guess is they may recruit more yanks into Sydney than get expats to come back. Where’s your money on?

Subsequent to my online marketing article, Joel Cheesman, SEO specialist for the recruitment industry has written an article on how to use MySpace as a recruitment tool . You could argue that the volumes he refers to are those relevant to the US; however my understanding is that Australians are becoming an increasingly larger mass of users on MySpace after the aussie channel was launched last year. In any case, most of his hints are pretty valid and relevant for us.

Again, here’s the piece. And when you register don’t forget to invite me as your friend

Missy Higgins’ new album is out on april 28th, though you could listen to it entirely on her space since last Friday. She’s put out the complete production before anyone is forced to spend one buck in buying the cd, and before “mainstream” got ripped music

You could argue she’s left money on the table; I could argue you are wrong: she’s got 21 shows scheduled between the 2nd and 21st of May, the best venues already sold out. It’s not easy money: I imagine it will be an intensive exercise. May be there is no other way to go to market.

Throughout the album’s ramp up she’s been posting to her blog, loading candid photos and offered a exclusive performance to people that reached her through a myspace-targeted competition. When her fans get to see her on stage, it will not be the first time they’ve heard from her; she’s been nurturing relationships online well before she starts playing and singing that day.

Ok, it may not have been her doing all the posting, it was someone from her team, you shattered my illusion, ya happy now??

As is with music/art, she will be as good as her last composition; there will be no blogging that case save an inferior product (PR professionals turned bloggers might disagree). Meantime, she’s investing online in her brand to build depth, familiarity, humanness; much of that is what you would like to achieve when you develop your own employer brand online.

She’s not the only artist doing it, but I was in quite a mellow mood last night when I was drafting the post.

Have a great week.